Creating Voice Applications Using VoiceXML and the IBM Voice Toolkit
Are you looking to create state-of-the-art, voice-driven applications? Look no further than to IBM; the latest iteration of the IBM Voice Toolkit integrates with the Rational Software Development Platform, giving you a turnkey development environment based on industry standards, including VoiceXML and Java.
by Ray Rischpater
May 20, 2005
'll be honest. I've always been a sucker for voice-navigated applications. At the first startup I worked at, two of us were given Macintosh Quadras as development workstations, and we spent more office time the first week playing with the speech recognition engine than actually cutting code. A good voice application (which admittedly the Finder running on the Quadra wasn't!) is a dream to use, freeing users from the traditional ball-and-chain of a keyboard and monitor. Unfortunately, until recently, the tools to build such an application were out of reach of all but a few. The IBM alphaWorks Voice Toolkit preview puts professional tools for developing voice applications in the hands of every developer, through evaluation or professional licenses of the Rational Software Development Platform and WebSphere Studio.
Installation
Installation is straightforward, albeit slow, unless you're already running the Rational and WebSphere Studio suites. Your development workstation must be running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, and in addition to downloading the IBM Voice Toolkit, you will need to download evaluation or professional versions of both the Rational and WebSphere suites—a minimal install can span almost two gigabytes. Installing the tool chain is a multi-step process; the download consists of images combined by an extraction program which creates CD images, from which you then install the necessary tool chain and finally the IBM Voice Toolkit. Mercifully, you do not have to burn the CD images to disk first!
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'll be honest. I've always been a sucker for voice-navigated applications. At the first startup I worked at, two of us were given Macintosh Quadras as development workstations, and we spent more office time the first week playing with the speech recognition engine than actually cutting code. A good voice application (which admittedly the Finder running on the Quadra wasn't!) is a dream to use, freeing users from the traditional ball-and-chain of a keyboard and monitor. Unfortunately, until recently, the tools to build such an application were out of reach of all but a few. The IBM alphaWorks Voice Toolkit preview puts professional tools for developing voice applications in the hands of every developer, through evaluation or professional licenses of the Rational Software Development Platform and WebSphere Studio.
